Quote of the Day: Grandiose Edition

“Rep. Mike Thompson, Democrat of California, who is a Vietnam veteran and dedicated deer hunter, told us this morning in a meeting at the Times that he was shocked at how much the gun lobby is now dominated by people who think they need to own the same gun the police or the army has so they can protect themselves against tyranny — a grandiose fantasy.” – Andrew Rosenthal in Congress Sluggish on Gun Control [via nytimes.com]

85 Responses to Quote of the Day: Grandiose Edition

The military doesn’t use what we have and cops deal with people we could need to deal with. Gotta love the lies. I guess everything surprises idiots like the thompson when the outside the liberal bubble.

It’s not a lie if they don’t know the facts making it false…. Liberals suffer from delusions brought on by their sheer stupidity. Nothing else. They have nothing else to drive them, so they let their emotions take the wheel.

“Mike Thompson represents California’s 5th Congressional District. The district includes all of Napa and parts of Contra Costa, Lake, Solano and Sonoma Counties. He was first elected in 1998. Prior to serving in Congress, Rep. Thompson represented California’s 2nd District in the California State Senate where he chaired the powerful Budget Committee.”

Exactly – I am never one to diminish another’s military service, but I for one am tired of these so called veterans using their “service” as bona fides for disarmarment. When some REMF uses their service in this manner, they should post their unit and rank. Some Oh-100 admin POG who sat in the A/C his entire tour does not hold the same weight as a grunt, from any branch. Period.

He was an airborne instructor, had a purple heart too. But it’s not relevant to his politics in my opinion. He’s my representative, and I’ve been writing him quite often about this crap. Not everyone from our backwards ass state thinks this way.

Agreed. Getting drafted does not score points for anything. And obviously clueless or much worse.

Guy apparently SSGT/PL in 173rd ABN a, instructor and Benning Abn Training school and did recieve Purple Heart. This according to his BS .gov site. I couldn’t come up with anything real though. I’ll guess likely was 11B so I’ll give him some points (+10) but assume based on his age, residence, employment and politics too many drugs in the 60s (-50). PH could well have been for a really bad papercut.

As usual, MB, you read what you wanted to read. It does matter who and what they did in their service. For the admin types and AF flight line warriors it does make a difference to me as someone whose service took me primarily to field. I find it almost impossible to find grunts in favor of disarmament. So I want to make sure its a grunt who favors disarmament before I move to summarily dismiss them as another Admin POG who feels like the military should only be able to have AR and AK style weapons.

All veterans have earned my respect. A very small number, through their extraordinary efforts, have subsequently unearned it. That’s why we have a Constitution: So that no efforts, no matter how extraordinary, whether well meaning, misguided, or ill-intentioned, can deprive others of their rights.

Don’t you just love that they always have to “qualify” the bonafides with some statement like “Vietnam/Desert Storm/ OIF/OEF Veteran” or “avid duck/deer/outdoorsman” in an attempt to legitimize their position.

While I respect all veterans for their service, I have to agree with Bach that some have veterans have “unearned” that respect due to doltish behavior.

I’m a Vietnam vet, I don’t parade it, it was but a way station in the long adventure of life. Anyone who now tries to immunize their views from criticism by touting an event four decades gone has already shown the weakness of their argument.

It’s today’s young Iraq & Afghanistan vets who deserve the highest respect. They still have their lives ahead.

…..this character doesn’t think we could turn into a tyrannical police state.

I’d like to see him explain away how New York state has become such with people being offered rewards for turning in their friends and neigbhors for violating the New York state recently passed SAFE act.

Hitler and Stalin used the same sort of tactics.

This is 1984 come to pass…..

Regards,

Chuck(le)
P.S. This Rep is another oath-breaker. Just like McCain and my own dear state senator Angela Giron-Carpenter.

In one sense I agree with him. The left has a better way of controling the population than the brute force of the modern police state that too many of you are preparing for. Crime is the now the preferred method of social control. The left has practiced and honed this technique in the inner cities since the 1960s and now they are moving to spread this social model to the rest of society. Make the people poor, imobilize them and disarm them. Then let the criminal class turn their neighborhoods into economic and social wastelands where the cowed population is depend on the government. Stop fighting the last war. An armed citizenry keeps the crime rate down, and the economy and society in good health. That is the war we are fighting and not the boot of the Stasi.

Yes, tdiinva, that’s the real story. The most relevant virtues of the RKBA shift from time to time as to the preponderance of benefit offered by some one of the multiple justifications takes the forefront. Crime and riot are the most sensible practical justifications for the right to effective defenses, at the level of a patrol rifle for example. When it comes to pass that only the police can use force to constrain crime then each citizen or identifiable group is liable to have his defenses, the police, withdrawn or reduced if he falls from favor. Worse, the police can be granted reduced oversight, effective permission to abuse any politically disfavored groups. Long after the War of 1812 policemen in the US did not carry guns routinely. A posse of neighbors with guns was called out to provide force if needed. This began to end about 1840, as urban political machines grew. It is not some catastrophic war but rather the relentless small-scale political use of crime-and-cops that most urges citizen defenses. At least that’s my read. The issues were no different in the era of lords and peasants. Only the rights were yet to be established. In Britain those rights were developed and secured, only to be willingly foregone once the public forgot what problems the rights counteracted. Neither the thieving brutes at the bottom nor the richly empowered elites at the top want an armed citizenry restricting their freedom of action.

“America has to stand up,” said a weary and angry Senator Feinstein, who will offer a separate assault-weapons ban amendment. “I can’t fight the NRA. The NRA spends unlimited sums, backed by the gun manufacturers, who are craven in my view.”

Translation:

“Damned NRA bought Harry Reid years ago!”

Senator Feinstein, I’d say it is your fellow democrat senators who are craven….

” . . . he was shocked at how much the gun lobby is now dominated by people who think they need to own the same gun the police or the army has so they can protect themselves against tyranny — a grandiose fantasy.”

I have a dream. To own an F-16, fully equipped with Sidewinder, Sparrow & Stinger missiles, dual 50-cal full auto machine guns, night vision capability, and every other option available from the dealer, along with my neighbors, so the people can sit down with their representatives in government at the table of brotherhood as equals.

The funny thing is, you can already own a fighter jet (probably not an F-16 though as it’s probably got things that are prohibited from being sold in it). Still, there’s plenty of military fighters a rich person can own. Lot of people own various MIGs for example. Guess what, you can ALREADY mount dual 50 cal machine guns on it, too! Gotta pay the tax stamp, though. You can get night vision (or even advanced thermal imaging, which most units in the military don’t have)–prolly can’t get the military ones, but who cares, I’d bet my life that top end civilian hardware is *BETTER*.

Not only that, but you could mount some bombs and/or missiles on your MIG, too! Gotta pay the tax stamp for each one, but you can do this already! Probably can’t mount a sidewinder (again because it probably has some military hardware that is prevented from being sold, but NOT due to any BATF laws). But if you really wanted too, I’m sure you could put together a heat seaking missile of your own.

Yet no one gives a crap, and none of this stuff is used for nefarious purposes. Why? Because it’s expensive as hell.

The real danger isn’t any rich americans owning a missile. Who cares. The real danger is a terrorist simply *walking across the mexico/us border*. Which, if you think they can’t pull off cheaply and easily. . . lol. . .Why would anyone wanting to cause harm pay millions for a jet when they can pay hundreds for a plane ticket (9/11) or a few grand for a truck bomb and do way more damage?

The talk of “why should anyone need a tank” or “do you think people should be able to own fighter jets” is just a silly charade. You already can own these things. No one cares. They cost a TON of money and anyone intending to do harm would, to say the least, spend their money on something MUCH cheaper and MUCH more effective.

I don’t think the idea behind the 2nd Amendment was for the people to rise up against a standing army – I think the idea was not to have a standing army, or at least not to have a standing army large enough to go up against an armed populace, engage in empire-building, deplete the public purse, and basically do all the bad things nations with large armies are wont to do with them.

The Militia also ran at the more important Battle of Plattsburg fought on September 11, 1814. They were charged with defending the river fords and protecting the flank of the main defense line. They ran away and British Army was within sight of the rear of our defensive lines when they were recalled after we defeated them on Lake.

Right, and popular history likes to show the 300 Spartans as the lone defenders of Thermopylae, when it was actually the 300 Spartans supported by roughlt 7,000 men from the local militias, Thespians included.

The same concept is valid today. A small professional force leading a much larger trained (well-regulated) non-professional force.

Good point – although only the Spartans had long hair. True story. See Herodotus, Book VII:

As they were thus deliberating, Xerxes sent a scout on horseback to see how many they were in number and what they were doing; for he had heard while he was yet in Thessaly that there had been assembled in this place a small force, and that the leaders of it were Spartans together with Leonidas, who was of the race of Heracles. And when the horseman had ridden up towards their camp, he looked upon them and had a view not indeed of the whole of their army, for of those which were posted within the wall, which they had repaired and were keeping a guard, it was not possible to have a view, but he observed those who were outside, whose station was in front of the wall; and it chanced at that time that the Spartans were they who were posted outside. So then he saw some of the men practising athletic exercises and some combing their long hair. And as he looked upon these things he marvelled, and at the same time he observed their number; and when he had observed all exactly, he rode back unmolested, for no one attempted to pursue him and he found himself treated with much indifference. And when he returned he reported to Xerxes all that which he had seen.

The primary purpose of the Second Amendment is what it says: an armed citizenry is better prepared to become a soldier in time of war. The Founding Fathers recognized that the armed citizen prepared to defend the Republic against tyranny as a collateral effect. As late as the WWII half of American males were experienced in the use of rifles and shotguns before they were drafted. Many of these draftees could have qualified on the M-1 on their first day in the Army.

You read “necessary to the security of a free state” as being about foreign wars or invasions rather than about a threatening national government? It seems that it has more to do with the latter, especially in light of all the other amendments in the Bill of Rights, all of which were passed to limit the power of the national government.

A militia that is “well-regulated” by the state is not, by virtue of that regulation, an arm of the state. The militia originally was no different than the people, as I understand it.

I think the sort of militia you mean is a “select militia,” which was a more regular type of state army, though not a standing army. The select militia was separate from the ordinary, general militia.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on this subject – I’ve only just started learning about it in the last few months – but there have been different kinds of militias for different purposes. And the 1789 concept of the militia was different from concepts that arose afterward.

I am getting tired of repeating this but regulated means drilled in the Prussian Manual of Arms as in von Steuben’s “Blue Book.”

The original Militia was called out as needed. It was not the select or organized Militia. The organized Militia came into existence because of the general Militia’s poor performance in the War of 1812. The last call up of the original Militia concept occurred during the Blackhawk War of 1836. It once again failed.

After the War of 1812 it was recognized that the country needed a small standing Army to take care of peacetime security requirements and act as cadre to train for a general militia call up, i.e., the draft. This principle was first used in the Revolution to train Continentals. Barron von Steuben trained a model company and the broke them up to train more soldiers. This is how we built our large citizen Armies for the two world wars. A regular company could train a Division, a battalion could train a Corps and a regiment could train a numbered Army. My father was a pre-war regular and was one of about 200 soldiers who trained our entire airborne force.

I know what “well-regulated” means. I thought you were mistaking that phrase to mean the militia was part of the state.

And we agree, too, about the original militia not being a select militia.

The question we were debating is whether the militia could be properly characterized as an “arm of the state,” as you put it. I’d say the militia was not an arm of the state simply because it was called into duty sometimes by the government. I’d compare the militia members to jurors of today, who are also called into duty by the government but who are not truly “an arm of the state.” Jurors are more like a check on the government, because the government has to appeal to their judgment in the application of the laws – and juries are famous for using their own judgment instead of following the lead of the prosecutors. Likewise, the government was dependent on the militia’s willingness to be called out to service. If the militia members refused to go, who was going to make them?

OK, granted – and thanks, because I wasn’t aware of that history – but that does not tell us what the original purpose of militias were as understood by those who drafted and approved the Second Amendment. Rather, it tells us why later generations decided to create different kinds of militias (and, ultimately, standing armies) which ended up confusing our understanding of the Second Amendment.

I think we should treat gun owners that support gun controll the same way that progressives treat black conservatives. “House Gunny” is a good phrase. “Auntie Feinstein” is another, aling with “Token gun owner”.

Many assumed It was a “grandiose fantasy” of the American colonialists who rebelled against the British Empire that they would win independence.Whether they fought because they had a dream or because it was simply the right thing to do, they won. Those men were America’s greatest generation.

I usually call what you guys have as “grandiose victimism,” because in most of your sick minds it ends in a Waco-like scene in which you go down in a blaze of glory. Some of you, of course, have the totally unrealistic fantasy of fighting the government and winning – the Afghans prevailed against the Soviets after all. For you guys it’s simply a “grandiose fantasy,” as the man said.

All of it is the stuff of fevered imaginations – the government is not coming for your guns.

See Mikey, that’s where you and your looney friends have it all wrong. Completely. This Waco style ending you’ve convinced yourself is the exact opposite of how we think confiscation will happen. This is the theory you and the other gun grabbers have invented to convince yourselves that A) we’re crazy, B) you’re somehow right in your pursuit to infringe the 2a.

The reality is you and your gun grabbing, unconstitutional friends will slowly erode the 2a to the point where owning a shotgun with a three round capacity will be a luxury. All in the name of preserving gun rights for hunters. Even though there is no mention of that in the Constitution. From there you can push any social agenda you want on society without fear of any pesky armed rebellion. This Fudd and many others like him (and you) claim to be pro 2a while helping to create a nanny state. Big gubmint will take care of you, keep you safe, make everyone equal.

I for one, absolutely do not want a Waco style ending and will disassociate myself entirely from anyone who does. But that’s not how We think it will end. It will end with a slow erosion of the 2a first. Brought about with the best intentions, incrimentally after each tragedy. In an effort to “do something”. Followed by a more rapid decline many years later after the previous restrictions have taken their toll till all we will legally (after an insane bureaucratic process) have left are 3rd shotguns in 20ga or smaller and a 5 shot .38 for home defense (no CCW or open carry). Meanwhile you’ll pat yourselves on the back for making the streets safer and preserving the “spirit” of the 2a, which you claim is hunting and self defense. I challenge you to find that language in anything the founding fathers wrote.

So if the Waco fantasy you’ve created for us gives you the moral courage and superior mandate to disarm America, so be it. Because the more you push that, the more you get the moderates out there to say, “wait, that’s not me, and further more, I resent that implication.” You’re going to have to change your tactics because outside the circle-jerk mentality of your gun grabbing friends, More and more fence straddlers are seeing the truth everyday.

About that final remark, I really don’t think the fence sitters are moving in your direction. You gun-rights fanatics are becoming an ever-more concentrated fringe element of the gun owners at large, which themselves are fewer and fewer. You’ve seen the reports, which I imagine you either ignore or disparage as lies, but they say that fewer households have guns now than in the past. That’s because the paranoid dupes of the gun manufacturers, you guys, are the ones buying up all the guns and ammo.

It’s clear that even among gun owners, there is a divide over what rights the 2nd protects.

Some (including yours truly) believe that it protects the right to present effective armed opposition to those who would infringe on my other rights or assault me, my family, or my community. This interpretation clearly entitles me to keep and bear arms which include AR/AK, M1A, and .416/.50bmg class rifles.

The other school of thought believes that the 2nd protects the right to bear arms suitable for hunting (Rem 700 in .270) or limited self defense (38spl 6-shot revolver). I believe this is based on a romanticized notion of what early Americans would have chosen if you dropped them into a Matrix-like arsenal.

Given the choice, I assert that the contemporaries of Patrick Henry would have selected an AR-10 and a double-stack STI .45 loaded with 16 JHP +P rounds, and that their basis for doing so is perfectly applicable today: the most effective available tools for defending self, family, and community.

The challenge is convincing the hunting-and-limited-defense crowd that their view is a weak and vulnerable interpretation of the 2nd. Until they realize that the limited 2A rights they’re willing to accept are just as threatened as the broader rights we assert, they will continue to be a thorn in our side.

It’s hardly a “grandiose fantasy” for anyone other than the leftists that are trying to permanently enslave a nation. A “rapidly approaching nightmare” would be a more accurate description. “Schumer’s wet dream gone wrong” might be another. Meanwhile, Obama’s “civilian security force” continues to militarize with recent additions of military drones and heavily armored vehicles. With whom, exactly, are the civilian police forces at war?

The despicable Mike Thompson is my “representative” in the people’s house. He inherited his seat from the even more despicable bagman for the Pelosi mob, George Miller, when they gerrymandered George to an even safer seat. This is not Thompson’s first outrage since the 2013 gun grab began. He is the purported author of “federal law does more to protect ducks” (with the three-shell capacity limit for waterfowling) “than it does to protect humans.” This piece of profound wisdom came to him in the duck blind where he first heard of the Sandyhook shooting. Of course I have heard the same words from Feinstein and other gungrabbers, so we know it was focus-grouped and sent out from the politburo as approved talking points.

Note that his website also says that Thompson carried a “military style assault weapon” during his service in Viet Nam.

Are country was born from the atrocities of revolution and suppression, that’s why we have the 2nd, the right to defend our own! ANY MAN OR WOMAN IN GOVERNMENT OFFICE WHO DOES NOT RECOGNIZE THIS OR REMEMBER THESE REASONS SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE “HASTILY WITH ALL PREJUDICE”!

Is it really so hard even for a Democrat to believe that an American government can be a deadly killer right here? Black, red and yellow people have reason to be suspicious. Blacks were enslaved, reds were exterminated and yellows were imprisoned in camps and stripped of any property they couldn’t carry. The peaceful “Bonus Army” was shot up by our military. Kent State kids were killed by the National Guard. There’s a long list of government murders and overreaches. Perhaps the dedicated deer hunter needs a history lesson — or a spanking for being so childish.